Auction News - The Magazine Pieces

Of the eight lots of original artwork by Edward Gorey auctioned at Swann Auction Galleries in New York City on December 10, 2019, three were created for use in periodicals. The largest piece (image size 12.25" x 9.25") was commissioned as a cover for the January/February 1988 issue of Print Magazine. This fantastic watercolor and pen & ink painting is a fantasy image that leaves the viewer with more questions than it answers. The entire piece can be summed up in one word, "Why?". Why are there floating snakes of various colors? Why are there orange mustaches everywhere? Why is there a gramophone at the seaside? Then again, why not? Mr. Gorey left virtually no room for the title of the magazine to be superimposed on the cover, but the art director managed to squeeze it into the upper right hand corner. This glorious painting sold for $16,250.00 (including buyer's premium).

From the 1970's through the 1990's, Edward Gorey created over 25 spot illustrations for TV Guide Magazine, and all of the pieces have three things in common - they are large, colorful, and imaginative. The weekly magazine could be found next to armchairs in living rooms and lounges across the nation, keeping everyone informed of the upcoming broadcast programming. The pages of program listings were made of cheap newsprint, but a color section had television related articles on all subjects, and Mr. Gorey's commissions reflect the eclectic nature of the articles.

For this piece on the trend of recording a video will that would be presented to the grieving survivors, Edward Gorey shows the expectant mourners viewing a television propped on the deceased's final conveyance. It is all too obvious by the preferred placement of the cat that the people will come away disappointed in the testamentary distributions of the deceased. This colors for this piece are muted greens and greys, but the art director must have wanted more "pop" on the page and tweaked the colors towards yellow, downplaying the somber tones of the original. All of Mr. Gorey's pieces for TV Guide are drawn large and reduced for the magazine - this piece measures 7.5" x 5.25", which is almost the size of the magazine itself. This fantastic piece sold for $8125.00 (including buyer's premium).

The third magazine illustration offered was created for the July 19, 1983 issue of Sports Illustrated Magazine for a feature on the history of baseball. This unlikely subject - one cannot imagine an art director saying, "I know, let's commission the art from Edward Gorey! He is a great sports illustrator." - is presented simply, with a strong, compact visual flare. As often happens once the artwork lands in the hands of the art director, the image was severely cropped, tightening the composition but ultimately damaging the finesse of the image. This piece realized $7000.00 (including buyer's premium).

Happy Holidays!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

from Goreyana

Auction News - The Ballet Pieces

The December 10, 2019 Illustration Art Auction at Swann Galleries in New York City offered a scintillating selection of original works by Edward Gorey in several themes. Going to the ballet was a lifelong obsession for Edward Gorey and two of the lots offered were ballet themed works.

Ballet in a Nutshell (Lot 42) was the first Gorey piece offered in the auction lineup. Originally published in Dance Magazine in January 1974, this large (8" x 10" image), beautifully detailed pen & ink drawing distills Edward Gorey's innumerable theater going experiences into a single image. The piece sold for $6250.00 (including buyer's premium), the only piece in the group to sell slightly below its pre-auction estimate.

The top half of the nutshell shows three performers dancing on stage, while the lower half shows the theater lounge at intermission. Mr. Gorey was a familiar figure in the lobby lounge, holding court and exchanging bon mots with other attendees. The sometimes complimentary, but more often amusingly bitchy comments rise like poison cigarette smoke from the participants - the man on the far right is holding a cigarette. It could be assumed that the third gentleman from the right is Mr. Gorey himself, the silhouette shows a man in a bulky (fur?) coat.

The fashion styles of the day are evident, even is silhouette. Pant legs are flared. A person (man, woman?) on the left has a neck scarf, over the shoulder bag, leggins, and chunky heeled shoes. The woman in conversation with the Gorey figure has a short, mod skirt and earrings. the central group is an older crowd with bow ties, more traditional dresses and hair ribbons. This drawing clearly represents the time period in which it was created.

This piece is a technical tour de force in pen & ink. Light and shadow are expertly conveyed from the onstage lighting of the performers to the masterful use of white space in the brightly lit theater lobby. The infill of small, vertical lines around the "nut" give a sense of the endless carpet in the theater lobby. This piece is a sibling to Edward Gorey's 1973 volume The Lavender Leotard, or Going A Lot to the New York City Ballet (goreyana.blogspot.com/2009/05/lavender-leotard.html), which presents much the same subject in book form.

The next lot (Lot 75) included two costume sketches from a 1975 production of Swan Lake, presented by the Andre Eglevsky Company at the Rockland Community College, Suffern, New York. This lot sold for $10,000.00 (with buyers premium), solidly within the estimate. Both of these designs have amusing notations that present intimate windows into Edward Gorey's love of ballet. The notes on the first piece begin with the exclamation, "Whee!". The costumes are clearly presented, with Sigfried's costume is minutely detailed as to types of fabric and decoration.

The owl costume on the second page is similarly detailed and beautifully illustrated. Edward Gorey clearly envisioned how a performer would move in the costume, indicating where and how the large feathered cape was to attach to the dancer's body. Special details, such as "dark brown unshiny boots with cuffs" and "hands in white gloves with finger ends stained black" provide not only costume details, but give the performer a glimpse into the character, as envisioned by Mr. Gorey.

Auction News

Christmas came early for several lucky bidders at Swann Auction Galleries Illustration Art Auction on Tuesday December 10. Eight pieces of original artwork by Edward Gorey were offered for sale, with only one of the pieces falling slightly below the presale estimates, while the rest sold at or above the estimates. One piece, the 1988 full color cover painting created for Print Magazine sold for $16,250.00 (including buyer's premium) far exceeding the presale estimate of $7000 - $10,000. A seasonally appropriate highlight of the auction was the full color Christmas card design (shown above), which sold for $7000.00.

All but one of the pieces in this sale were offered by The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, being culled from the Edward Gorey archives and were sold to benefit the charitable donations made to animal causes by the Trust. The winning bidders are now the first private owners of the works, essentially purchasing the pieces from Edward Gorey himself. Purchasing directly from Mr. Gorey (either from the artist himself or through Gotham Book Mart) has not been possible since the time of his death in early 2000. For the past nineteen years, original art has only been available on the secondary market and was limited to pieces sold before February 2000.

Goreyana will take a look at some of the other pieces from this auction in in upcoming posts.

Holiday Auction News

The original artwork for this wonderful Christmas Card design by Edward Gorey will be auctioned at Swann Galleries in NYC next week along with seven other Gorey originals.  Go HERE  to see these and the other original pieces being offered on December 10.

Where is the Dragon?

For his entire career, Edward Gorey was an artist for hire who could, and often did, illustrate anything he was commissioned to undertake. If an author was fortunate enough to secure Mr. Gorey's professional services, the artistic and financial rewards could be considerable. Mr. Gorey was not however, the type of collaborator who would chat for hours with a client, if at all. Even so, authors would occasionally make special requests.

Such was the case with Florence Parry Heide with regard to the back cover image for Treehorn's Treasure (1981 Holiday House , New York). Throughout the book, the illustrations picture Treehorn's imaginings as full page thought bubbles. The original artwork intended for the back cover shows an elaborately rendered dragon floating in one of these bubbles while Treehorn himself blows a gum bubble. The printed version of the drawing shows only Treehorn blowing his gum bubble. Where did the dragon go? To unravel the mystery of the disappearing dragon, we turn to Malcolm Whyte, the collector who owns the original artwork.

Malcolm Whyte has collected and written about the works of Edward Gorey for many years and he recently shared his research into the backstory of this wonderful drawing. To unravel the "now you see it, now you don't" aspect of the artwork, Mr. Whyte was put in contact with Florence Parry Heide's children David and Judy by a mutual friend. Judy related that upon viewing the back cover illustration her mother "loathed" it as being too un-Gorey-like and too comical. Feeling strongly about this even though she knew "Edward Goery couldn't stand having people mess with his work or tell him what to do", Mrs. Heide contacted Mr. Gorey and requested the dragon be removed. After the book's publication, the original illustration was gifted to the author by Mr. Gorey in what might be considered a personal comment on her interference. The drawing was later gifted to Andreas Brown from whom it was acquired by Mr. Whyte as a gift for his wife. The Whyte's continue to appreciate and admire the drawing as the exceptional piece of art that it is.

How did this elaborate drawing get whittled down to the spare image adorning the back cover of the book? For such drastic changes to an image, Edward Gorey would typically either redraw the entire piece, or glue pieces of paper over the parts to be removed and redraw on the art itself. Today the image would be altered in a matter of minutes by erasing the dragon on a computer, but in 1971 the process would have been done by hand as a cut and paste using a stat or film. On the original artwork, there are a series of four xeroxed border panels affixed to the surface of the drawing, indicating the new placement of the horizontal decorative border row on the wall. Were the xeroxes made and affixed by Edward Gorey himself? This is one mystery that may never be solved.

The Doubtful Guest, Original Artwork From The Edward Gorey Trust

Continuing the daunting task of cataloging the Edward Gorey archive, the Edward Gorey Trust has been regularly posting images of rare original artwork on Instagram. The pieces being shown range from grade school drawings dating from the 1930's - Master Edward's mother appears to have saved much of his early artistic efforts - to pieces from the 1990's. This masterful on-line exhibition gives us a glimpse at some of the treasures that have long been buried within the archive.

A recent post features a drawing from Edward Gorey's third published book, The Doubtful Guest (1957 Doubleday & Company). Arguably one of Mr. Gorey's most beloved publications, the drawing is captioned:

It would carry off objects of which it was fond,
And protect them by dropping them into a pond.

Illustrators have many tricks they employ to quickly make changes to a piece of artwork so they do not need to redraw the entire image. For this Doubtful Guest drawing, multiple changes occurred within the image that are not seen in the printed version. After 62 years, the changes become more obvious as the paper tones slightly, revealing many white gouache (opaque watercolor) corrections.

Crop marks placed by the artist in the four corners of the drawing indicate to the printer the final size and shape of the printed image. For this drawing, the crop marks on all four corners have been adjusted larger than originally indicated. The adjusted cropping changes the feel of the image in the same way that a movie camera can be pulled back to show more of the scene.

The upper image shows the original cropping, while the lower image shows the final cropping. The drawing itself has not changed in any way and the difference the cropping makes is subtle, but significant. The viewer is part of the action in the upper drawing, empathizing with the man in the fur coat. In the final version, the viewer becomes one of the people in the distance, a voyeur looking at the scene but helpless to interact. This, of course fits the tone of the book more accurately, with the family under siege from the benign creature.

The scale of the Doubtful Guest has also been significantly reduced. The gouache shows that Edward Gorey had already inked in an outline for the creature - if the DG were merely drawn in pencil, the lines would simply be erased. This clearly shows how the drawing was constructed. The outline of DG was finalized, then Mr. Gorey went on to draw in and finish the figures and background. At this point, he realized that the scale of the DG was too large and reduced his scale to that of a child in relation to the gentleman. If the DG had been completely inked in, there would be masses of white paint, or a paper cutout would need to have been glued onto the surface to block out the ink. It is interesting to note that the eerie floating quality of the watch is a consequence of the scale change of the DG. The watch was obviously already drawn in because it is scaled and positioned to match the original outline, dropping from its hand/paw/wing rather than floating out in front if the DG.

Just like a good murder mystery, this piece of artwork has many clues indicating how it was done and why it happened the way it did! To view more treasures from the Edward Gorey archive, follow EdwardGoreyTrust on Instagram.